L on the Murder Scene
by 1CS
Summary: This crossover combines the character L from Death Note with the storyline of My Chemical Romance's album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (the story of a man who makes a deal with the devil: 1000 souls in exchange for bringing his lover back from the dead). Will L be able to stop the jaded Demolition Lover before the 1000th soul? Or will L be part of the body count?
1. Lost in Coma and Covered in Cake

4

L on the Murder Scene

Lost in Coma and Covered in Cake

L hunched over farther in his chair than normal. An ant was slowly zigzagging its way towards the stack of sugar cubes L had just balanced on his desk. Absentmindedly, L picked up a sugar cube with his index finger and thumb and brought it down upon the ant. He twisted it downwards, squishing the insect. He pressed too hard and the sugar cube crumbled. Triumphantly, the ant emerged from the granules and did an about-face, taking a sugar crystal with it. Watari, L's faithful assistant, entered the room holding a silver tray with an assortment of pastries and cakes on it. He brushed the sugar off the table with a gloved hand and placed the tray in front of L. He lifted an electric kettle of hot chocolate off the warmer from the bookshelf behind L and filled L's ceramic mug. L picked up a doughnut from the tray and dunked it in the hot cocoa, showing little interest in either.

"Something the matter, sir?" Watari asked, a grey eyebrow arched.

"There's nothing interesting happening. No case I would like to pursue." L scratched his head, rustling his spiky, black, matted hair.

This wasn't normal for L, Watari thought to himself. Even if there wasn't a case that challenged him, L could at least find _something_ , however trivial, that interested him.

L's desk was chaotic – on one side of the table there were stacks upon stacks of papers. These were reports of global events and crimes that L had been scanning. The wall behind the desk was covered in TV Screens – each screen broadcasting different news stations across the world. The rest of the space on the desk was given over to sweets – cakes, truffles, lollipops, doughnuts, marshmallows, and so on. L brushed past some papers and grabbed a metal skewer that had rolled underneath the plate of pastries on Watari's tray. With more focus than he afforded to the dunking of the doughnut, L picked up a cream puff and slid it down the skewer. He repeated this process five more times until he had a cream puff kabob. He topped it off with a chocolate-covered mini-éclair.

"Absolutely nothing," L said again, more to himself than to Watari. He picked up the skewer with one hand, and slid it in his mouth, biting off the éclair and three cream puffs. With his other hand, he stirred his mug of hot chocolate with a lollipop and raised the mug to his lips.

"Did you see the breaking story on the Demolition Lovers?" Watari offered.

L closed his eyes, which were dark with heavy circles from lack of sleep. He was in his early twenties, and was surprisingly lean and wiry for all the sweets he consumed. Through his multiple aliases, he was the world's top three detectives simultaneously. He walked with a hunch, no doubt due to constantly leaning forward, looking at evidence, typing, and watching screens. His typical attire, a white shirt and jeans, had taken a rare hit as some cocoa splashed out of his mug and spilled down the front of him.

"Of course," L muttered, grabbing a newspaper by the corner. He held it between his finger and thumb like it was contaminated. "Nothing more than a lovestruck couple thinking they can outrun the law." L lowered the newspaper and blotted the spilled cocoa on his shirt. The incident Watari had referred to had made headlines recently. A male and female couple had performed a string of liquor store robberies and were killed in a blaze of gunfire. "Til Death Did Us Part," one of the headlines proclaimed sensationally.

"What's left to solve?" L sighed and rolled his eyes. Nobody knew who the couple, nicknamed the Demolition Lovers, really were. But that didn't matter to L. Whatever motives they had, whatever delusions they shared, it was all over. The bad guys were dead, for all intents and purposes the case was closed.

Watari adjusted his thick glasses and adjusted his tie to fall back in line with his suit.

"Well then, I shall return to my office. Let me know if I can be of further assistance," Watari said with a bow and exited. Despite being in his late sixties, Watari was just as sharp and quick as ever. He had known L since the latter was a child, and was the one that brought him to the Wammy House, a school for gifted orphans. Watari had watched L's genius grow beyond expectations and had now stepped away from managing the Wammy House to assist L fulltime with his detective work. It was rewarding, and he knew L would get out of this rut. As soon as Watari was back in his office, his computer screen lit up. A white screen with a gothic "L" in Cloister Black font popped up. A call from L already. Watari sat down and pressed his microphone on.

"Why L, what is it?" Watari said, holding back a smile.

Back in L's office, L was holding up the newspaper that he had used to soak up some of the spilled chocolate. He raised it towards the light with one hand, while turning his microphone on with the other. "Did you see the wedding-day massacre?"

Watari rubbed his forehead. "You mean the one in New Jersey, sir?"

"Precisely," L said staring intently at the article he discovered in the newspaper. He plopped an oversized marshmallow into his mouth.

"I would think that one has even less to solve than the Demolition Lovers, sir." Watari's concern didn't register with L. L laid the newspaper down on the desk and thought for a few minutes. He shoved two more marshmallows into his mouth and pressed the microphone on again.

"See Watari, they have this all wrong," L's voice was muffled by the marshmallow. "Here's what we know – a whole wedding party died. Arsenic in the cake it looks like. All the guests, save one in a coma. They said it was a murder/suicide. The baker, the prime suspect, died at the wedding with the 250 guests. It doesn't make sense. Typically, in murder/suicides, the killer takes their own life alone or after the fact. It's more like a cult to have everyone die at once. I suppose we can't rule that out. But something else is bothering me. At what wedding does every single guest try the cake? And they all died? With no witnesses?"

L stared at his screen, which showed a white background and gothic-style W, for Watari, in the center. He waited for Watari's voice to come over the speakers. When it did, it was quiet, just above a whisper. Despite being in a penthouse, the windowless room felt like an expansive cave. Watari's faint voice echoed and reverberated against the walls.

"And this case is what interests you, sir?"

L smiled. "Watari, you should know that anything involving cake is relevant to my interests."


	2. To the End

6

L on the Murder Scene

To the End

As Watari made his way to the mansion of the crime scene, L was lost in thought. He never showed his face in public, and he would have to devise a way to investigate in person if need be without revealing himself. For now, Watari would be L's link to the crime scene. Equipped with a small video camera masquerading as a corsage on his suit jacket lapel, an in-ear phone, and a wire, Watari served as L's eyes and ears. The mansion itself was stunning. It sprawled expansively in front of Watari as his black car approached, unfurling across the horizon, blending in as if it stretched out towards infinity. Way Estates, the iron letters proclaimed, nestled between the vertical bars of the foreboding gate. Watari left his car running in neutral as he got out to swing the gate open.

L used this moment to take in what he could see from Watari's corsage-cam. "What a strange place for a wedding," L said under his breath. The mansion of Way Estates was built to evoke the gothic era. There were spiraled towers that flanked either side of the massive wooden door. They rose up towards the heavens, obscured by the grey clouds hanging low in the sky. The outside of the mansion was covered in a dark stone that seemed to deliberately close itself off from visitors. However, the most recent owners must have sought out a country cottage aesthetic. Purple wildflower wreaths were placed over the gargoyles that loomed above the door, pink snapdragons and golden sunflowers lined the flowerbeds on either side of the driving path up to the door.

Despite being blocked off by yellow caution tape and the site being restricted by police, Watari was able to enter Way Estates untroubled. He had the credentials if asked, but the manor was eerily empty and quiet. Watari pushed open the large, oak door and it swung open silently, with little effort. The interior of the mansion reminded L of an impressive old-world cathedral on the inside. As L watched through his monitor, he noted the cavernous entry room – the ceilings arched, the floor was a marbled tile, and there were stone pillars lining the entryway, spanning floor to ceiling. L directed Watari to explore the first level of the house. He walked along the corridor past some artwork and sculptures. L noted a large canvas in a baroque frame. _The Black Parade_ , a placard read. The painting showed a grim reaper leading a black-clad marching band. The painting directly across from _The Black Parade_ was a smaller portrait. It was of an pre-teen boy with dark sunken eyes. Big black circles surrounded each eye, making them look like shiny pennies that had fallen to the bottom of empty twin ponds. The boy was very pale, and had short cropped hair that had been bleached to almost white. _Cancer_ , the placard simply, yet elegantly, read.

"I believe we are in the processional hall," L informed Watari. Guests would have lined up here to greet the newlyweds as the exited the wedding alcove after the ceremony. The rest of the interior has been modernized past this grand entryway. "Turn to the left and enter the servant's area," L instructed. In the time it had taken Watari to drive to Way Estates, L had hacked into the police files and had the blueprints for the manor on one of the screens in front of him.

Watari complied with L's instructions. He walked down the vast corridor and found a modest door. He entered and found himself in a stuffy room filled with bags of stained cloth. A rustic looking washing machine was in the corner of the room, and a scratched-up wooden table filled the center. This room looked nothing like the grandeur of the front of the mansion. The lighting was dim, the once-white plaster walls were now yellowing, and there was a thin layer of grime coating everything.

"There should be a service elevator along the back wall," L instructed. The reception was on the rooftop terrace- an outdoor sunken garden accessible from the eleventh floor." Watari spied the elevator, it blended in with the wall with ease. As he pushed the horizontal doors open, the metal groaned and slowly opened up and down, like an obstinate oyster that spitefully refuses to yield its contents. Watari climbed in and pulled the grate shut. Looking at the buttons, he noticed there was no floor eleven.

"This elevator only goes up to ten, sir," Watari said regretfully.

"Ten it is then," L sighed. "I'm sure there's a way to get there."

Watari selected floor ten and the elevator jerked upwards and dragged itself to its destination. Watari exited and looked around.

"I'm not seeing a staircase on the blueprints," L said intently. "This can't be right."

"Can I help you?" a gritty, but inviting, voice called out to Watari. He spun around and saw a young man standing there. He was wearing a black pinstriped suit and had jet black hair. His face was the color of bone and he reminded Watari of the boy from _Cancer_ , only now in adulthood.

"Yes, I'm with the FBI," Watari said and flashed a credential. He had several, one for the FBI, one for the CIA, one for Interpol, all of which were valid thanks to L's accomplishments. L's services were sought out around the world, and most (if not all) doors were open to him without question. L preferred to investigate on his own before working with the various branches of authority – he found that he could accomplish more independently than by being restricted to the regulatory framework such organizations imposed. There was less red tape with hacking and surreptitiously breaking and entering.

"I need to get up to the eleventh floor," Watari continued.

"I can show you that," the stranger offered. "It's a bit of a trick." The man clearly took Watari's lack of an introduction as an invitation to not offer his own.

"Go ahead, follow him," L whispered into Watari's ear. "Just be vigilant in case he's not as helpful as he seems." Watari nodded to himself and gestured to the man to lead the way.

This level of the mansion was very modern, and quite minimal. There was steel piping visible through a glass ceiling. You could see wood and plaster behind the pipes. The walls were similar – made of a thick glass that revealed the piping and wire work underneath. "How very odd," Watari thought to himself. "Why hide a secret passage on a floor that's so transparent?"

The man stopped at a statue placed on a pedestal along the right-hand wall. It was of a woman with spiky hair and soft features, despite the hard lines used to carve her face into the stone. The pedestal was shrouded in a bright red and orange velvet cloth that was tattered and frayed intentionally. The effect created an illusion of fire, reaching up to consume the bust. _Mama_ , the placard on the statue read. The stranger took out a pick and knelt to the floor. He picked at something on the base of the pedestal behind the statue, and the panel of glass wall jutted out. The man stood up and slid the panel (glass, piping, wires, and all) down to the side. It slid with ease.

L stared intently at the sliding glass door. The whole room was a series of sliding glass doors hidden in plain sight. By giving the illusion of the wiring behind the walls, by having glass instead of plaster covering it, one would assume that the walls were the limits of the room. The door that the man slid open revealed a stair way. Watari and the man followed it up and outside. Here it was, level eleven.

The outdoor courtyard was gorgeous, even with the macabre air that permeated it from recent events. There was a pool at the far end, and a sunken garden in the middle of the space. The expanse was disorienting at first, but it was not hard to imagine how 250 guests comfortably fit up there. There was room for at least double that. "So, it was a small wedding by capacity standards," L thought to himself as he took in the view from Watari's corsage-cam. They were high up enough to see that the gothic façade at the entrance to Way Estates was merely that – something added to give the illusion of dramatic grandiosity. Or perhaps it really had been initially envisioned as an ancient cathedral – and then was expanded to by millionaires with eccentric tastes.

The man cleared his throat. "I'll leave you to it," he called out as he turned away and descended back down the stairs.

On his wall of screens, L had several images of the bodies from the crime scene pulled up, taken from the police files. On his main screen, L kept his stream from Watari's hidden camera running. Darting his eyes from the images of bodies to the now vacant space Watari stood, it wasn't hard for L to juxtapose the sight of 250 bodies scattered around Watari in the courtyard. There were corpses of men floating in the pool, bloated. A woman laying on her back, her hand curled around a rose bush. Bodies laying in the flower beds of the garden like fallen petals. The magnitude of death was staggering. Even without the visuals, Watari could feel the presence of death around him. He was an intruder in a space that could never be reclaimed for the living.

L's thoughts interrupted themselves. He couldn't focus. He knew he had seen that man somewhere before. If he was the model from the _Cancer_ painting, was he an owner of the property? No, he couldn't be. The owners had died at the wedding reception they had attended as guests. L frowned. He wasn't staff, they had all been dismissed and sent away from the police. L pulled up the roster of faces of officers working on the case. The stranger wasn't a part of the task force investigating the alleged murder/suicide of the wedding. L glanced at the newspaper crumpled on the floor and stained with the residue of hot chocolate from the day before. His eyes drifted past the wedding massacre headline and rested on the one that called out "Til Death Did Us Part." There, the article about the Demolition Lovers. He looked at the images of the nameless suspects. The man in the article was the same man who just guided Watari to the eleventh floor of Way Estates! But he had died along with his female accomplice. They should be at the morgue waiting for identification. How could that be? L heard a cracking sound that pulled him out of his mental haze. He looked up at his screens and saw the corsage cam falling in the pool.

"Watari!," L called into the microphone as the camera stream lost signal. "Get out of there!"


End file.
